You won’t find him on any Federal Election Commission disclosure forms, but Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is the biggest in-kind donor to the incipient Rand Paul for president campaign.

Whatever its merits, the National Security Agency meta-data program couldn’t be better fashioned to play into fears of the government. Is it vast? Yes. Was it secret? Check. Does it arguably run outside the normal checks and balances of government? Uh-huh. Does it raise profound questions about privacy? Roger.

This is the kind of issue Rand Paul was born and (literally) raised to raise holy hell over. And it isn’t just the NSA program lately. The leak about the program came on the heels of revelations that the IRS was singling out tea party groups for extra scrutiny and invasive questions, and on the heels of the AP and James Rosen investigations.

Add in the gun control fight from earlier this year and Paul is nearly 4-for-4 in fights sticking up, in his view, for the first four amendments of the Bill of Rights. The only thing that is missing is the third, because no has proposed the quartering of troops in our homes — yet.

On Wednesday, a Paul aide told me that another aide in the office came to him with a printout of a news article and asked, “Can anything else break that plays into Rand’s core issues?” It had just been revealed that, unbeknownst to anyone, the FBI had been using drones for surveillance. The sound you hear is TV producers falling over themselves to book the Kentucky senator who rocketed to conservative celebrity on the strength of his filibuster of the administration’s drone policy.

It is a Rand Paul moment in the Republican Party not just because the headlines almost every day seem to reinforce his core critique of leviathan as too big, too unaccountable, and too threatening, but because he is smart and imaginative enough to capitalize on those headlines.

Paul has that quality that can’t be learned or bought: He’s interesting. How many potential Republican presidential candidates have helped shepherd a new verb into the English language. The hoopla around Paul’s filibuster gave us, “to drone,” in the sense of “don’t drone me, bro,” as an attendee yelled when Paul took the stage at CPAC.

Other conservatives in the Senate like to brag that they joined Paul’s filibuster, but it was Paul who came up with the idea and executed it, in an inspired bit of political theater.

He taps into an American tradition of dissent not usually invoked by Republicans. At the Time magazine gala this year honoring the 100 most influential people in the world (he was one), he raised a glass to Henry David Thoreau. In his inaugural Senate address, he contrasted his Kentucky hero, the irascible abolitionist Cassius Clay with the more conventional Kentucky political legend, the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay.

His cultural affect is different, too, a little more Utne Reader than National Review. At a packed event at the Reagan Library he explained, “I’m a libertarian conservative who spends most of my free time outdoors. I bike and hike and kayak, and I compost.” It might be the first positive reference to composting in the history of that fine institution.

Because he cares about ideas, Paul’s team doesn’t have to worry about him holding his own in substantive discussions. An aide relates how, on his recent West Coast swing, he visited with a Silicon Valley bigwig and they got to talking intensely about fiscal and monetary policy. After about 20 minutes the executive interrupted to say, “Can I just say? I have never had a conversation like this with a politician in my life.”

Not too long ago, Paul’s foreign policy views would have been an insuperable obstacle to a serious presidential run. No more. The evolution in the party’s foreign policy can be captured in the story of the Pauls. In 2008, Ron Paul’s noninterventionism made him a punching bag in the Republican primary debates. In 2012, it got a respectful hearing. In 2016, his son’s (less toxic) version of the same policy will probably be close to the mainstream in a party exhausted with the world for the time being.

At least for some stretch of 2015, Rand Paul could well be the Republican front-runner, tapping into grass-roots enthusiasm on the model of Howard Dean in 2003. And it’s not inconceivable that he could go further than that famous representative of “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” although the field will presumably be very crowded on the right.

Paul has a built-in online and grass-roots network of the sort it takes years to build. In fact, it did. His father built it, and now he’s working to expand it in his extensive travels. Over those years, his father welcomed into his fold cranks and haters, and one of Rand Paul’s quiet messages is that he has his father’s core convictions, without the loathsome baggage.

I’m far from a Rand Paul-ite. I don’t think there was ever any threat of Americans being droned sitting at cafes, nor do I think drones are the scariest invention in the history of flight. I’m not where Paul is on foreign or national security policy, and I doubt his libertarianism has as much cross-over appeal in blue states as he hopes. (Blue state moderates like government, alas.)

But libertarianism is a significant strand on the right. It should be represented, and represented well. By and large, Rand Paul does that. Anyone underestimating him in 2016 does so at their peril.

"Rand Paul’s positions and rapid ascent have alarmed many Republican hawks," reports NRO's Robert Costa. "Behind the scenes, they’re worried that he has a shot at the nomination."

What do the hawks plan to do about it? They're The 'Stache, AKA former Undersecretary of State and U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton:

Quote:

Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is being encouraged by several leading conservative power brokers to consider a presidential bid.

Bolton, who briefly considered running for president in 2012, hasn’t made up his mind. But sources tell me that he is moving closer to giving the idea serious consideration — serious enough to travel to Iowa and New Hampshire.

Later this year and throughout 2014, the former Reagan and Bush official will begin an informal national tour. He’ll give speeches, huddle with GOP leaders, and push back against the party’s libertarian shift. He’ll make the case for a muscular foreign policy.

Sources say Bolton is also planning to launch a few related groups that will help elevate his argument and his national profile. Whether the efforts evolve into a presidential campaign in a couple years is unclear, but Bolton is, without a doubt, looking to be a player.

The GOP has all these hot young superstars--Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Paul--plus some more seasoned folks--Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, Kelly Ayotte, Chris Christie--and the neocons push Bolton? How the mighty have fallen!

You won’t find him on any Federal Election Commission disclosure forms, but Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is the biggest in-kind donor to the incipient Rand Paul for president campaign.

Whatever its merits, the National Security Agency meta-data program couldn’t be better fashioned to play into fears of the government. Is it vast? Yes. Was it secret? Check. Does it arguably run outside the normal checks and balances of government? Uh-huh. Does it raise profound questions about privacy? Roger.

This is the kind of issue Rand Paul was born and (literally) raised to raise holy hell over. And it isn’t just the NSA program lately. The leak about the program came on the heels of revelations that the IRS was singling out tea party groups for extra scrutiny and invasive questions, and on the heels of the AP and James Rosen investigations.

Add in the gun control fight from earlier this year and Paul is nearly 4-for-4 in fights sticking up, in his view, for the first four amendments of the Bill of Rights. The only thing that is missing is the third, because no has proposed the quartering of troops in our homes — yet.

On Wednesday, a Paul aide told me that another aide in the office came to him with a printout of a news article and asked, “Can anything else break that plays into Rand’s core issues?” It had just been revealed that, unbeknownst to anyone, the FBI had been using drones for surveillance. The sound you hear is TV producers falling over themselves to book the Kentucky senator who rocketed to conservative celebrity on the strength of his filibuster of the administration’s drone policy.

It is a Rand Paul moment in the Republican Party not just because the headlines almost every day seem to reinforce his core critique of leviathan as too big, too unaccountable, and too threatening, but because he is smart and imaginative enough to capitalize on those headlines.

Paul has that quality that can’t be learned or bought: He’s interesting. How many potential Republican presidential candidates have helped shepherd a new verb into the English language. The hoopla around Paul’s filibuster gave us, “to drone,” in the sense of “don’t drone me, bro,” as an attendee yelled when Paul took the stage at CPAC.

Other conservatives in the Senate like to brag that they joined Paul’s filibuster, but it was Paul who came up with the idea and executed it, in an inspired bit of political theater.

He taps into an American tradition of dissent not usually invoked by Republicans. At the Time magazine gala this year honoring the 100 most influential people in the world (he was one), he raised a glass to Henry David Thoreau. In his inaugural Senate address, he contrasted his Kentucky hero, the irascible abolitionist Cassius Clay with the more conventional Kentucky political legend, the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay.

His cultural affect is different, too, a little more Utne Reader than National Review. At a packed event at the Reagan Library he explained, “I’m a libertarian conservative who spends most of my free time outdoors. I bike and hike and kayak, and I compost.” It might be the first positive reference to composting in the history of that fine institution.

Because he cares about ideas, Paul’s team doesn’t have to worry about him holding his own in substantive discussions. An aide relates how, on his recent West Coast swing, he visited with a Silicon Valley bigwig and they got to talking intensely about fiscal and monetary policy. After about 20 minutes the executive interrupted to say, “Can I just say? I have never had a conversation like this with a politician in my life.”

Not too long ago, Paul’s foreign policy views would have been an insuperable obstacle to a serious presidential run. No more. The evolution in the party’s foreign policy can be captured in the story of the Pauls. In 2008, Ron Paul’s noninterventionism made him a punching bag in the Republican primary debates. In 2012, it got a respectful hearing. In 2016, his son’s (less toxic) version of the same policy will probably be close to the mainstream in a party exhausted with the world for the time being.

At least for some stretch of 2015, Rand Paul could well be the Republican front-runner, tapping into grass-roots enthusiasm on the model of Howard Dean in 2003. And it’s not inconceivable that he could go further than that famous representative of “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” although the field will presumably be very crowded on the right.

Paul has a built-in online and grass-roots network of the sort it takes years to build. In fact, it did. His father built it, and now he’s working to expand it in his extensive travels. Over those years, his father welcomed into his fold cranks and haters, and one of Rand Paul’s quiet messages is that he has his father’s core convictions, without the loathsome baggage.

I’m far from a Rand Paul-ite. I don’t think there was ever any threat of Americans being droned sitting at cafes, nor do I think drones are the scariest invention in the history of flight. I’m not where Paul is on foreign or national security policy, and I doubt his libertarianism has as much cross-over appeal in blue states as he hopes. (Blue state moderates like government, alas.)

But libertarianism is a significant strand on the right. It should be represented, and represented well. By and large, Rand Paul does that. Anyone underestimating him in 2016 does so at their peril.

There's a false position establishing that a "Libertarian" view can't take a strong stance on foreign policy. IMO I think it's because the Left is afraid of a patriotic Libertarian with such views. If this country saw a candidate that was a passionate speaker and a true economic conservative, if he wasn't torn down by the media unfairly, he'd win by a landslide... But I have to admit that's slowly eroding as people become more and more hooked on entitlements, which are going to bankrupt this country.

There's a false position establishing that a "Libertarian" view can't take a strong stance on foreign policy. IMO I think it's because the Left is afraid of a patriotic Libertarian with such views. If this country saw a candidate that was a passionate speaker and a true economic conservative, if he wasn't torn down by the media unfairly, he'd win by a landslide... But I have to admit that's slowly eroding as people become more and more hooked on entitlements, which are going to bankrupt this country.

You sure about that?

Wiki wrote:

Richard A. "Rich" Lowry (born 1968) is the editor of National Review, the conservative American magazine of news and opinion. He is a syndicated columnist and political commentator.

There's a false position establishing that a "Libertarian" view can't take a strong stance on foreign policy. IMO I think it's because the Left is afraid of a patriotic Libertarian with such views. If this country saw a candidate that was a passionate speaker and a true economic conservative, if he wasn't torn down by the media unfairly, he'd win by a landslide... But I have to admit that's slowly eroding as people become more and more hooked on entitlements, which are going to bankrupt this country.

You sure about that?

Wiki wrote:

Richard A. "Rich" Lowry (born 1968) is the editor of National Review, the conservative American magazine of news and opinion. He is a syndicated columnist and political commentator.

Did National Review go Liberal?

Or is it "Liberal biased" because you don't agree with it?

What's your point? Yes, an article that states that Republicans are "running scared" over a nomination that is 3 years away is in fact liberally biased. That's pure garbage, and flat out stupid.

There's a false position establishing that a "Libertarian" view can't take a strong stance on foreign policy. IMO I think it's because the Left is afraid of a patriotic Libertarian with such views. If this country saw a candidate that was a passionate speaker and a true economic conservative, if he wasn't torn down by the media unfairly, he'd win by a landslide... But I have to admit that's slowly eroding as people become more and more hooked on entitlements, which are going to bankrupt this country.

You sure about that?

Wiki wrote:

Richard A. "Rich" Lowry (born 1968) is the editor of National Review, the conservative American magazine of news and opinion. He is a syndicated columnist and political commentator.

Did National Review go Liberal?

Or is it "Liberal biased" because you don't agree with it?

What's your point? Yes, an article that states that Republicans are "running scared" over a nomination that is 3 years away is in fact liberally biased. That's pure garbage, and flat out stupid.

Actually, its quite similar to your post in that they are BOTH OPINION

There's a false position establishing that a "Libertarian" view can't take a strong stance on foreign policy. IMO I think it's because the Left is afraid of a patriotic Libertarian with such views. If this country saw a candidate that was a passionate speaker and a true economic conservative, if he wasn't torn down by the media unfairly, he'd win by a landslide... But I have to admit that's slowly eroding as people become more and more hooked on entitlements, which are going to bankrupt this country.

You sure about that?

Wiki wrote:

Richard A. "Rich" Lowry (born 1968) is the editor of National Review, the conservative American magazine of news and opinion. He is a syndicated columnist and political commentator.

Did National Review go Liberal?

Or is it "Liberal biased" because you don't agree with it?

What's your point? Yes, an article that states that Republicans are "running scared" over a nomination that is 3 years away is in fact liberally biased. That's pure garbage, and flat out stupid.

Actually, its quite similar to your post in that they are BOTH OPINION

Sure... But that's a garbage opinion that you seem to be using to bolster an argument.

No one on the Right is currently "running scared" that Bolton is going to get the nomination. That is simply false, completely and utterly false. It's grandstanding in a weak attempt to legitimize a point, and if you're not smart enough to see that... Shame on you... It's agenda driven nonsense... Even if it does further a point that I would like to see made.

June 25th, 2013, 2:45 pm

TheRealWags

Modmin Dude

Joined: December 31st, 2004, 9:55 amPosts: 12296

Re: The Rand Paul moment

wjb21ndtown wrote:

Sure... But that's a garbage opinion that you seem to be using to bolster an argument.

No one on the Right is currently "running scared" that Bolton is going to get the nomination. That is simply false, completely and utterly false. It's grandstanding in a weak attempt to legitimize a point, and if you're not smart enough to see that... Shame on you... It's agenda driven nonsense... Even if it does further a point that I would like to see made.

Not quite sure where you're getting that interpretation from.

Allow me to repost:

Quote:

Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is being encouraged by several leading conservative power brokers to consider a presidential bid.

Bolton, who briefly considered running for president in 2012, hasn’t made up his mind. But sources tell me that he is moving closer to giving the idea serious consideration — serious enough to travel to Iowa and New Hampshire.

Later this year and throughout 2014, the former Reagan and Bush official will begin an informal national tour. He’ll give speeches, huddle with GOP leaders, and push back against the party’s libertarian shift. He’ll make the case for a muscular foreign policy.

Sources say Bolton is also planning to launch a few related groups that will help elevate his argument and his national profile. Whether the efforts evolve into a presidential campaign in a couple years is unclear, but Bolton is, without a doubt, looking to be a player.

My interpretation of the article posted is that the Right / Neo Cons / Repub hawks are 'running scared' about Rand Paul running and they're trying to get Bolton to run too in hopes of quieting down the Libertarian / Rand Paul faction.

_________________

Quote:

Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right....

June 25th, 2013, 4:50 pm

wjb21ndtown

Re: The Rand Paul moment

TheRealWags wrote:

wjb21ndtown wrote:

Sure... But that's a garbage opinion that you seem to be using to bolster an argument.

No one on the Right is currently "running scared" that Bolton is going to get the nomination. That is simply false, completely and utterly false. It's grandstanding in a weak attempt to legitimize a point, and if you're not smart enough to see that... Shame on you... It's agenda driven nonsense... Even if it does further a point that I would like to see made.

Not quite sure where you're getting that interpretation from.

Allow me to repost:

Quote:

Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is being encouraged by several leading conservative power brokers to consider a presidential bid.

Bolton, who briefly considered running for president in 2012, hasn’t made up his mind. But sources tell me that he is moving closer to giving the idea serious consideration — serious enough to travel to Iowa and New Hampshire.

Later this year and throughout 2014, the former Reagan and Bush official will begin an informal national tour. He’ll give speeches, huddle with GOP leaders, and push back against the party’s libertarian shift. He’ll make the case for a muscular foreign policy.

Sources say Bolton is also planning to launch a few related groups that will help elevate his argument and his national profile. Whether the efforts evolve into a presidential campaign in a couple years is unclear, but Bolton is, without a doubt, looking to be a player.

My interpretation of the article posted is that the Right / Neo Cons / Repub hawks are 'running scared' about Rand Paul running and they're trying to get Bolton to run too in hopes of quieting down the Libertarian / Rand Paul faction.

Ok.. To rephrase... No one on the right is currently "running scared" about an election that is 3 years away.